Thomas County Middle School students in Mrs. Amanda West's sixth-grade MERIT social studies class recently entered a writing contest sponsored by the Georgia Farm Bureau Foundation For Agriculture. The writing competition encouraged students to increase their level of agricultural literacy through research. The writing and research activity was designed to match middle grades literacy in the content area standards. The topic for this year's contest was: "What are the benefits of school gardens?"

As more schools are adding gardens to their landscape as teaching laboratories across the curriculum, students wrote a persuasive essay on why their school should have a garden and how the crops would be used in the school. The district winner of the competition is Addison Weiss, and honorable mentions were given to Lee McCorkle, DeAndria Daniels, and Garrett Landing. Each of the students are in the sixth grade MERIT program at Thomas County Middle.

Pictured from left to right is Garrett Landing, Lee McCorkle, DeAndria Daniels, and Addison Weiss.